A recent study reports patients’ perspectives on being a smoker and trying to quit. It’s one of the first efforts to ask seemingly simple but important questions, such as: “What do patients who smoke want and need from their physicians?

Rats in New York City carry a species of flea that is capable of transmitting plague pathogens. For a new study, researchers collected more than 6,500 specimens of five well-known species of fleas, lice, and mites from 133 rats.

Wires only a billionth as thick as a human hair may help keep the “super” in superconductivity. Superconductors are materials that, at low temperatures, can carry electric current without the wasteful loss of energy caused by resistance.